Wine Pill Makes Progress

If you’re fretting about drinking, you might be skipping red wine despite evidence that the grape squeezings may carry health benefits.

Some day, if all goes well in the lab, you may be able to take a pill instead. And Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a pioneer of the approach, just reported results from an early study in diabetic patients. The company’s drug, code-named SRT501, is based on resveratrol — a chemical found in red wine.

The results look promising, reports the WSJ, though it’s very early days. Resveratrol, which we’ve written about here and here, appears to slow the aging process and modulates blood sugar and insulin by activating the sirtuin 1 enzyme.

The company said yesterday that a 28-day safety study showed the drug known as SRT501 was well-tolerated and safe for patients, with no serious adverse events recorded. The drug also showed a statistically significant improvement in an oral glucose tolerance test on day 28, but not in fasting plasma glucose levels.

There’s a long way to go before we’ll know whether SRT501 will actually be a safe and beneficial drug for diabetic patients, but it’s being watched carefully because it could be helpful for other diseases as well. It’s the first to work by acting on the genes that control the aging process, Peter Elliott, senior vice president of development at Sirtris, said in the release.

“We chose diabetes because it’s a big market, but the biology says the drug could work on any number of diseases,” David Sinclair, a professor at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Sirtris, told the WSJ.